As important as Pokémon has been to basically my entire life, I still haven’t even finished Sword & Shield or Scarlet & Violet. I’ve bounced hard off most of the modern entries, and that’s mostly because of prominent technical issues and what I’ve felt was almost a loss of soul. Sure, I still like a lot of the new Pokémon designs, but the games themselves and their stories just don’t feel as adventurous or soulful. Legends: Arceus was the exception to that, and after following every tidbit of news and playing Pokémon Legends: Z-A, I’m genuinely hopeful it might be the Pokémon game I’ve been waiting decades for. Through a fantastic choice of setting and some brilliant changes to combat, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this excited for a Pokémon game.
While Z-A is the second game to sport the “Legends” moniker, it’s unrelated to the plot and setting of Arceus — but still in the same vein of splitting off from the mainline series. This is the very first Pokémon game to take place entirely in a single city, the dazzling Paris-inspired Lumiose City from the Kalos Region, which was first featured in X and Y.
